There are still thousands of marketers who are not using Twitter to its full potential. Some are not using it at all. As with any other social networking sites you can mention, you have to put in the work at the start to establish yourself as a credible, helpful contributor who is there to do more than just give a sales message and win customers. Using Twitter is an art form all of its own, and is totally unlike anything you will do anywhere else.
The short length of the messages you are allowed to send means that you have to approach the task in a completely different way. The underlying principle does not change, however, and if you are looking to build a long-term business presence, you will need to take a long-term view and work to build up your network of friends. These friends can see your tweets on their Twitter home page, so it is well worth making the effort to cultivate as many as you can.
As ever, it takes a bit of work and a bit of thought to use Twitter effectively. Make sure that your tweets are of value and interesting. If you can keep abreast of breaking news, and the latest trends in your area of expertise, you can build up a reputation as being someone to watch out for. This will keep you on people's friend lists, and give you the chance to broadcast an occasional message about your own website or profile which will encourage them to visit. Driving social network traffic is never quick or easy, but you can build up a reputation which will result in regular visitors to your site, who have every chance of becoming regular customers. The beauty of social networking is you can begin to appreciate the extent of your online influence as more people proactively interact with you concerning your area of interest or expertise.
For its 140-character limit per post, tweeting is also called micro-blogging. Apart from this limit, it is very much an open platform. The challenge is what content to add to create the biggest possible impact within the limits. Since you can’t say everything like in a typical blog post, it doesn’t mean you chop up a blog post into several Twitter entries. That’s...irrelevant.
I think first of all, you got to have a big picture of what insights you want to drive into the minds of your readers or followers. Writing entries like “I just woke up and brush my teeth” or “I’m getting ready my new PDF report by next Friday” doesn’t mean anything until they figure in a larger picture. For this picture to materialize, the twitterer must have 2 consistencies:
1) The frequency of tweeting.
2) The focus of the messages.
But let’s start with defining the big picture. If the picture is “The lifestyle of a millionaire Internet marketer”, then the entry “I woke up and brush my teeth at 7.30 am” will be a very intriguing post to start with because everyone else would love to copy what a millionaire would do, right? Your frequent entries will give an overall insight into a general pattern or rhythm of all your actions so people can deduce for themselves what they should do.
Likewise, if you are in the midst of preparing a product launch, tweeting is one very effective way to build up anticipation. Your series of entries provides a running commentary for an event and this gets your followers excited on their toes in real time.
Thus, I guess this is what Twitter is all about: to extrapolate and project eventful moments out of what could have been an ordinary life. The act of tweeting is also not capable of falsehood because you have to get to the point within 140 characters plus the fact that you’ve to maintain consistencies. When you adopt a strong tweeting discipline, you can establish a rock-solid presence that demands the attention of the faithful, and will not fade into the Twitosphere.
I recommend these 2 articles for your reading pleasure:
1) Your Guide To Micro-Blogging And Twitter
2) How To Use Twitter—Tips For Bloggers
Search around for other digital marketers’ Twitter pages and see what you can learn from them in terms of their writing styles and message timing and frequency.
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